West of Hell
by MusicalChick13
Summary: "Why'd ya leave?" Her eyes drift toward an indistinguishable spot on the ground. "A lot of reasons." "Why'd ya come back?" She lets out a shaky breath, returns her gaze to him. "One. One reason."


**A/N: Somehow, this became The Most Important Ship in the World, ™ and now I'm in Hell.**

He gets out of the hellhole he was trapped in. Some sort of good fortune-divinity, luck, whatever name it went by these days-intervened and decided to throw him a bone. After who-knows-how-long of torture so brutal he has completely lost track of whatever time has passed since the beginning of it, he can finally get back to business as usual.

But everything is decidedly _not_ business as usual.

His mind is fragile, if not broken completely. Abraham is gone. Glenn is gone. Morgan is nowhere to be found, and neither is…neither is _she_.

Rick told him what happened with Carol. And while he wishes he could understand, let her make her decision with a calm, reasonable attitude-

Well, he can't.

He never considered himself to be a particularly calm or reasonable man.

When she shows up in the middle of the night-one where he should be in bed but can't sleep because every time he closes his eyes, he hears that goddamned song-he has no words. Her face appears in front of him, and at first he thinks he's hallucinating, his mind still cripplingly fractured from all of the time he spent at Negan's mercy.

But she gives him a soft smile, not looking surprised in the least to find him still up at what must be two in the morning, and she looks at once impossibly so much older and so much younger at the same time, and he knows his mind could never create such an expression by itself.

She just stands there, infuriatingly silent, gaze soft, demanding, frightened, _broken_ … _so many things_. And he just wants this moment to be over. He wants all of it to be over.

"Why'd ya leave?"

Her eyes drift toward an indistinguishable spot on the ground. "A lot of reasons."

"Why'd ya come back?"

She lets out a shaky breath, returns her gaze to him. "One. One reason."

"You gonna tell me what that reason is?"

"I don't think I have to. I'm pretty sure you already know."

And he doesn't say anything. Doesn't think. He doesn't do anything but practically run toward her and crash his lips on hers, backing her up against some tree across the street that he's never noticed before.

It's been a very, _very_ long time since he's even _considered_ this. With anyone. And the broken part of his brain driven by nothing but doubt and self-loathing prays over and over again that he didn't somehow read this whole thing horribly wrong, but her hands find their way to his shoulders, then his face, before looping around his neck like a scene out of a really cheesy, terrible movie.

And suddenly, she draws away, as frightened as a newborn child experiencing the dark for the first time. Her eyes hold what looks like the weight of centuries of pain.

"You don't-"

"Oh, yes, I do," he practically growls.

"No, you don't understand!"

"Don't have to."

"Things happened, Daryl. Things that I can't…you would give up on me. You'd walk away. You'd never want to see me again."

"You really think that I'd leave you? After everything?"

She has to physically _fight_ to continue looking at him. Tears start to gather in the corners of her eyes when she says, in the softest voice imaginable, "…I left _you_."

"Ya didn't leave me. Ya left…" he gestures absently to the space around them, "All of this. Ya left a real bad frame of mind that was eatin' ya alive."

"I'm never going to make you understand, am I?" She doesn't say it condescendingly. Doesn't say it with anger or even sadness. She just sounds… _done_.

She _is_ done.

To be honest, she was done a long time ago.

She tries to say so many things. She wants him to see. Wants him to know. To understand exactly who she is and why she's torturing herself, because right now he refuses to.

She forms words, attempts to make them leave her body.

 _I love_ -

But they stick in her throat. The moment she lets them out is the moment she lets the universe have free reign over what happens to him. Saying the words out loud makes them irrevocably real, and making them real sentences him to death.

Because she loses everyone she loves. That's the way this horrible, new, unfair, apocalyptic wasteland of a world is.

He tentatively reaches a hand out to her cheek, ready to wipe away a wayward tear that stubbornly refuses to fall, and it's too much. She can't let him think well of her anymore. Guilt is already threatening to erode the last of her humanity, and she can't drown in any more of it.

"I shot Lizzie."

"I'm sorry."

"'I'm sorry?' That's it?! Daryl, I murdered a child."

"I know you. You-"

"You don't."

"I _do_. You wouldn't've done it if you didn't absolutely have to."

"SHE WAS A CHILD!"

"Children are sometimes worse'n adults."

"Stop doing that."

"Doin' what?"

"Making excuses for me."

"I ain't makin' excuses. I'm tryin' to get you to see straight."

"Morgan and Maggie almost died. Because of me! I threatened to kill him for treating one of the Wolves' injuries. And I almost didn't kill any of Negan's people the night you invaded the compound. Maggie and I never would have gotten taken if I had just done it instead of pretending to be a self-righteous idiot."

"Ya tried to protect people. Protect our home. Wanted to fix yer mistakes. Not the best way to go about it, but that don't make you the worst human alive. Not even close."

"I've killed so many people…" Her voice breaks on the second word, and she's so exhausted, so utterly _shattered_ that she can't even spare any energy to notice how pathetic it makes her feel.

There is a space in the air where he takes a breath, and Carol starts to think she's going to stay frozen in this moment, this place, forever.

(That wouldn't be the worst thing, she reflects.)

He finally asks,

"Ya enjoy it?"

That question was so, _so_ far from what she was expecting she thinks she must have misheard him.

"What?"

"Did. Ya. Enjoy. It."

"No. Of course not."

"Then there ya are. Killin' don't make you a bad person-it's liking it that makes ya evil. 'F it did, we're all horrible."

"Not all of us. Not Morgan. For the most part. Not anymore."

"Yeah, well fuck him."

And, of course, the first place her mind goes is the crude, literal meaning of that sentence, and maybe she simply wants to change the subject and feel _anything_ other than what she feels right now, or maybe she's just losing her mind, but she tilts her head back and honest-to-goodness _laughs_.

"I doubt _that_ would end well."

"Shut up," he says with a flick of an eye roll and a barely-concealed chuckle.

 _She doesn't deserve this. Happiness. Safety._ _ **Him**_.

 _Terminus._

 _The Wolves._

 _Denise's kidnapper._

 _Paula. Michelle. Molly. Those men in the street. How many others of Negan's minions._

 _Karen. David._

 _(Almost) Morgan._

 _Lizzie._

All of the others who are dead because of her, even if she didn't kill them.

 _Donnie. The man Morgan killed for her. Randall. Mika. Probably Sam, too._

 _Sophia._

Their names run through her head over and over again every night until she falls asleep-not because her brain quiets down, but because she collapses from exhaustion. A litany-a prayer, almost, but one more suited to the Devil than any God she might have once believed in.

How dare she try to foist that agony on him? Hadn't he been tortured enough?

 _Hadn't they both?_

"Ya said ya don't wanna kill anymore. That ya can't care because you'll do just that. But loving someone enough to kill for them-that's the only way to really live in this ridiculous piece of shit we call a world."

"If we mindlessly kill anyone who gets in our way, how are we better than the Walkers? Than the Wolves? Than Negan?" He visibly flinches at the mention of that last one, and she feels even more horrible than she already did. "How do we go back from that?"

"Ya can't go back. Ya can start over. But ya can't go back."

"Then let me start over. Let me live a life where I don't have to kill anyone else."

"Where you never care? 'Bout anything?"

"I can't kill for someone else, Daryl. Not again. Not anymore."

"I'd kill for _you_."

He's never been good at the feelings stuff. Not with the childhood he had.

But he is _not_ going to let her do this to herself.

"Stop."

"Stop what? Lovin' ya?"

 _There it is_.

And this woman-this poor, damaged, strong, beautiful, _perfect_ woman-looks like she's going to snap in half.

"Daryl…"

" 'F ya don't know that by now…"

"Please don't do this to yourself."

" _My_ self?" He could almost _laugh_. "Dammit, Carol, yer not the only one who's made mistakes!"

She blinks slowly, one, two, three times. Everything in the world seems to compress into the few square feet encompassing them both.

"Do you still blame yourself for that? For Sophia?"

The near-imperceptible way his eyes soften and his shoulders slump forward makes her heart ache in a way it hasn't since she lost her daughter.

"For Sophia. For Beth. For Glenn."

"How can you possibly blame yourself for what happened to Glenn?"

 _She had run into Rick in the woods on the way back, just…walking. He could very well have been one of the walkers with how exhausted and lethargic he'd been. He couldn't sleep. Hadn't been able to for a while, so he had relayed everything that happened._

"I stood up to him. I tried to fight back, and Negan warned me. Warned all of us. Any more outbursts'd mean somebody else died." He avoids her eyes, scared in equal measure of finding hatred or compassion there. " 'S my fault Glenn's dead."

"No, it's not."

"You weren't there."

"Look, if I don't get to do this to myself, neither do you."

 _She hated this world. She hated all of it. How it could take the best man she'd ever known and turn him into_ _ **this**_ _. All of its needless, merciless cruelty._

 _They all deserved better._

 _Not her. But everyone else._

 _Especially him._

"I love you," she says, more of a breath than actual words.

She doesn't know what else to say.

Doesn't know how else to make him see that doesn't deserve any of this. The guilt, the pain, the abuse, the self-hatred, the emotional baggage.

 _Just because_ _ **she**_ _did doesn't mean anyone else should jump into the abyss with her._

And he closes his eyes, clenches his fists. His head retreats back toward his neck, almost like a turtle trying to seek refuge in his shell.

She knows him. Knows him probably better than anyone, but she doesn't have the slightest clue what's going through his mind right now, and it scares her half to death.

"What about Tobin?" He says finally, eyes still closed, fists still clenched, head still crushing itself inward.

"He's…a wonderful man. But he…he doesn't understand. Not like you." Daryl cracks his eyes open, still in the same turtled position, and looks at her with the most trepidation she's ever seen on his face. Her chest is heaving, and she doesn't think she's ever been this terrified in her entire life. If she doesn't somehow choke these words out now, she'll start sobbing and never speak an intelligible sentence again. "What _we_ have. What we built…No one else could ever give me what you have.

"An' what's that?"

"Everything," she whispers hoarsely, half-crying, half-pleading.

His hands are on her face, smoothing back her hair, and he gently brings his lips to her forehead, just like she did, once.

He presses his forehead against hers and they stay like that for a while. Not moving, not speaking. Just breathing together, praying that this brief moment of respite doesn't melt away like everything else in their lives has.

At some point, her hands move to his face and her lips move to his. And kissing her again feels like a tidal wave of every scrap of happiness Daryl never allowed himself to believe he could have.

They break apart after what is probably only seconds but feels like days, but, in any case, is entirely too short of a time to be kissing Carol Peletier, and he's afraid she's going to run away again.

But instead, she threads her hand in his and says, "We should go inside."

"Ya sure?"

The implication of her words is not lost on him; this is the moment where everything changes, and change in this world is dangerous.

But he's always walked on danger's edge. Danger isn't really a word that means much to him anymore.

"Yes," she exhales, feeling the coil of sorrow squeezing her heart begin to loosen. "Are you?"

"Never more."

 _And it's true._

He really doesn't do the romance thing.

He really doesn't do physical relationships, with perhaps one or two exceptions.

But every exception applies to her.

It always has.

She's Carol.

And it's the only thing he really _knows_ in this stupid, God-forsaken universe.

He's the only thing she knows, too, anymore. The only real thing she has in this increasingly implausible story she's begun to call her life.

They reach his door, unlock it. With a muted _thunk_ it shuts behind them.

And, as they say, a window opens.


End file.
